American Beauty
Stars:
Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari.
Rated:
R
Plot:
Kevin Spacey and Anette Bening works through a midlife crisis.
My Rating: #
4 Stars. A must see, but try to keep a critical eye about you.
Review:
Is it any wonder that this movie won for best picture? I mean really. It had everything that the Academy wants to see. A story with a message, great acting, and lots of artsy cinematography. Well, I would have chosen the sixth sense, but I'm not the Academy.
The acting in this movie does deserve high accolades. First, Kevin Spacey was spectacular. He grabbed you into his character. Also of particular note are Thorah Birch, who plays Spacey's teenage daughter and Wes Bentley, the neighbors’ teenage boy. Both play disturbed teenagers and capture the spirit of their roles well. The acting is a great credit to this movie.
Next is this movie's impeccable use of cinematography, which is often in the form of video taken by Wes Bentley's character. If you're into the artsy thing (and I am), you'll enjoy how they use the camera itself as a medium toward expression.
Finally, I have to put my two cents in about this story. For the most part, this is a story about how Spacey and Benning work through their middle-aged doldrums. The movie presents a very interesting look into their lives. Inter-dispersed is the struggles of their teenage daughters, and other teenagers around. In this move, no one is happy with the stage of life that they are in. The stories of middle age and teenage intersect as Spacey takes a carnal (no, I won't call it romantic) interest in his daughters friend, played by Angela Hayes. Hayes is struggling with her own sexuality (although she'd be the last to admit that). When Spacey is lead to believe that he stands a chance to get Hayes in bed, he starts working toward that goal. But here's the scary part. To me, I thought this was a deplorable and inexcusable act. But if you watched the Oscars, you wouldn't have gotten that message at all . . .
I believe (but I could be wrong)it was Allan Ball I, who received an Oscar for his writing of this movie who said that the point to this movie was that all 50-year-old men lust after 17-year-old women. He then proceeded to thank his grandchildren, who were in the audience. In accepting his well deserved best actor Oscar, Spacey said something to the effect that this was a movie that went to show that any single act when taken in isolation can be taken as evil. Well, Kevin, in this situation there was a reason for the perception of your character as evil.
Even if it is true that all 50-year-old men lust after 17-year-old girl (which may in some ways be true, and I don't agree with Jimmy Carter that lusting in one's heart is such a sin), there is still a vast gulf between lust and action (and the action is a sin). I mean, this wasn't even a story about someone who fell in love with someone much younger than he (an idea which I won't pass judgment on here). It was about a 50-year-old man making a 17-year-old girl (no need to be PC, she was a girl) an object of his conquest. And that's just plain wrong. No matter how much the girl invites the advances.
So in the end: good movie, bad message.
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